Director: Gaurav Madan
Writers: Gaurav Madan, Sunny Lahiri
Cast: Gyanendra Tripathi, Bhumika Dube, Harish Khanna, Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, Akash Sinha
Duration: 118 minutes
Available in: Theatres
In Gaurav Madan’s Barah by Barah (“12×12”), the celluloid permanence of death grapples with the digital progression of life. Shot on 16mm film, the story lingers on Sooraj (Gyanendra Tripathi), a man mourning the slow demise of his profession. He is a death photographer in the holy city of Varanasi; his camera captures the final still of bodies before they’re cremated on the sacred Manikarnika Ghat. But the use of mobile phones – and the awkward marriage of technology and tradition – means that Sooraj’s services are no longer an indispensable part of the mortality business. It is after all the only custom that’s rooted in documentation, not deliverance. Unlike upper-caste priests and lower-caste cremation workers, photographers are restricted by the agnosticism of their role. Spiritually at least, anyone is ‘qualified’ to click a button. His portraiture itself is in danger of becoming a garlanded 12×12 inch picture.
As a result, Sooraj is stranded at the crossroads of not only tradition and modernity, but also social change and cultural continuity. The film does a fine job of quietly shaping this conflict. Almost every character is hanging onto a past that’s running out of currency.
Sooraj’s friend, Dubey (Akash Sinha), is a pyre wood supplier who has taken to sloganeering (“stop the wrecking!”) to preserve the heritage of Kashi (the locals’ name for Varanasi). But you can tell that his dissent stems from time, not faith. He is the only brother in his family refusing to sell his share of property to the government. He resists gentrification because it gives him a sense of purpose; the irony of being a cog in the wheel of religious tourism is lost on him. Sooraj’s father (Harish Khanna) is an old-school believer whose fading health begins to soften his ideals. He refuses treatment elsewhere (“People from all over come to Kashi to die and I go to some drab city hospital?”), but pursues a festival reunion with his estranged daughter. The sounds of demolition and drilling fill the city, but they’re also used to convey the breaking of these characters’ egos. Sooraj himself comes in contact with a visiting urban photographer; he starts to notice his own desensitization to death as well as the visual formality of salvation. He also starts to realize that his job has suppressed the artist in him. Bodies are burnt every minute, yet it’s the spirit of the living that invites decay.